


Walk Away

by Sophia_Bee



Category: Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Dark, Future Fic, Overuse of the Word Epic, Sexual Content, Veronica Drinks Too Much
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-03
Updated: 2014-10-03
Packaged: 2018-02-19 17:58:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2397578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sophia_Bee/pseuds/Sophia_Bee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Logan has been looking for Veronica…</p>
            </blockquote>





	Walk Away

“I shouldn’t smoke.”

Just after the last word of the sentence she put the cigarette to her lips and took a deep drag. She closed her eyes and pretended she was alone, that he wasn’t sitting next to her, fingers drumming on the scuffed bar.

“Nasty habit. I’ll kick it.”

“What happened to you?”

“I don’t know.” She lies, tipping the glass back and feeling the watered down alcohol slip down the back of her throat. There was a time when the drinks here were stronger, lasted longer.

Veronica glances sideways, trying to look at him without him knowing that she cares. He doesn’t look much different. Same profile. Same sad look in his eyes. She laughs a little to her self.

“I thought we were epic.” She mutters under her breath, sarcastic, sincere, she doesn’t know any more. She feels him freeze next to her. Does epic really mean that he will leave you behind, sleep with skanky gold diggers, skip town, never call? Not for five years.

Does epic suddenly show up at your favorite bar, the one place where you can drink in peace, expecting some type of forgiveness?

Maybe.

“I was drunk,” he says quietly, his voice tired.

“I know.” Veronica answers back.

“How often do you come here?” he asks, his hand fiddling with the change the bartender left on the shiny surface, never still, driven by some unseen energy. Veronica watches the water sweat down the side of her glass, pooling into a ring around the bottom. She feels the charge of electricity that slips up her spine every time he’s near. She swallows, trying to buy time, trying to find some composure.

“Every day, after work.”

She needs it. The numbness. She’s seen too much, the ugliness of life staring her in the face, daring her to look away. Veronica Mars, investigative reporter, queen of ‘If it Bleeds it Leads’. She spends her time sifting through the underbelly of the city: talking to hookers with black eyes; too scared to name their pimps. Standing on a porch as a grandmother slams the door, unwilling to tell her which gang fired bullets into her house, killing her grandchild. Sitting on a dirty, stained couch as a skinny, emaciated woman ties a tourniquet around her arm and flicks her skin with dirty fingernails, looking for a vein. The ugliness never goes away, standing on the street corner after a shooting, watching a mother screaming, cradling the limp body of her teenage son as his life slowly leaks away, staining the sidewalk so deeply that even bleach wouldn’t scrub away the signs of life he left behind.

Any sacrifice to get the story: too much.

“Fuck, Veronica.”

She couldn’t look at him, couldn’t stand to see the pity in his eyes. Instead she motioned to the bartender to bring another drink, another six ounces toward nothingness. She stared down at her now empty glass, wondering why now. She almost asks him, almost turns to look him in the eyes, search for meaning, almost opens her mouth and ask what he wants with her. Five years, too much pain, knowing that Aaron was free and Lilly was dead and nothing was right in her world. Five years.

Epic.

Epic is decades, pining for the man she can’t have, marrying for money, sadness and loneliness, and finally the moment when they can be together. Epic isn’t sitting in a bar, smoking cigarette after cigarette, and drinking bourbon neat until she has enough to fall into a sleep where she won’t remember her dreams.

Epic wasn’t a drunken declaration of love, his breath stinking like cheap Champaign, his words slurring softly in his mouth. Epic wasn’t her lips tingling as she remembered the way his mouth felt against hers, feeling the heat of his body just inches, knowing that she just had to lean forward…

Epic was dead, killed by the cold, sober reality of daylight, and the knowledge that nothing in her life could be depended on. Not him. Not anyone.

Veronica shook her head. The bartender slid her new drink in front of her and she picked it up, cold in her hand.

“Get the hell out of here, Logan.”

His name hissed from between her lips. It was the first time she’d said it in years. She still couldn’t look at him, looking out the window, watching the neon red ‘open’ sign at the Chinese restaurant across the street flicker, the reflection of the street lamp against the pavement, the way the rain hit the windows of the bar, the feet of people rushing by: anything but him. She heard the screech of tires somewhere in the distance, the wail of a siren. She’d get a call later that night, Jimmy at the crime desk. There’d be another crime scene, another story to write.

Veronica sighed.

“Veronica,” Logan started and she felt him move closer, felt the heat he radiated, the same heat that made everything seem crazy and out of control.

“Please,” she whispered. She closed her eyes and tried to shut out everything around her, to take herself back to a time when things were simpler and easier to understand. She tried to pretend her hands didn’t shake if she didn’t have a drink, pretend that the one boy she’d loved more than anyone wasn’t sitting next to her, his eyes pleading. Then she opened her eyes, slowly blinking back into reality.

He was gone: he walked away.

Maybe he’d never been there. She wasn’t sure.

*****

It hadn’t been hard to find her. A couple phone calls, the right questions to the right people, and he had an address, a phone number. Still he hadn’t been able to call, afraid of what she’d say if she picked up the phone and his voice was on the other end. More afraid that she’d hand up.

That was three years ago.

He’d read the papers, seen her name in the by line. Once he’d actually driven by the paper she worked at, watching the entire time just in case she happened to be outside the building at that particular moment. He never saw her.

There was an interview, a local morning show with overly perky hosts doing a piece on the increase in crime during the warm summer months. She sat on the purple over stuffed couch looking uncomfortable as the hosts bantered cheerfully. Her mouth was drawn and pinched and Logan could see that her words never reached all the way to her eyes.

He hired a man to follow her, find out where she went, how she spent her time. He learned that she went from the paper to the bar, then home and back to work the next day. No friends. No dates. Just work, the bar and home.

Did he want to start this again? After all these years of getting used to living with the emptiness she’d left him with.

He knew the answer.

Logan leaned against the smooth brick outside the bar, his chest rising up and down as he fought to catch his breath. His hands shook as he searched his pockets for his car keys. He felt his lashes start to wet with tears.

He wouldn’t cry for her. Not again.

It was the way she’d begged him, the way the world ‘please’ was whispered, that one word that stood in the place of a thousands pleas to just leave her alone. She liked her life, the loneliness; the isolation. Anything was better than him. He’d heard it all, felt all her pain and heartbreak as she’d asked him to walk away. Again.

_Fuck you, Veronica Mars._

He wanted to yell, to scream so loud that his voice echoed off the wet walls of the buildings that loomed around him. He wanted to sink to the pavement, shiny from the rain that washed away the dirt and grime left by the city, to feel the roughness against his palms.

He did nothing.

Instead he hunched his shoulders and walked away. Again.

*****

It was a mistake.

Veronica sat at the bar, frozen in the silence and suddenly she felt completely alone. Because she was.

A chill crawled up her arms and she felt goose bumps scatter across her skin. She shuddered, trying to shake off the sudden overwhelming feeling of sadness. She couldn’t shake it, couldn’t keep it from slipping into her head and rattling around, the little voice telling her that she’d let him walk away. Again.

Her drink still sat untouched and she wanted to pick it up and feel the burn of the liquor down her throat. If she could then she could go on like nothing had happened. Then she could push him out of her mind, out of her heart, out of her life. Again.

Her hands stayed glued to her side.

Veronica struggled for air as everything grew thick around her, the sounds strange and warped as she turned around and looked at the door as it swung shut. She wanted to glimpse him leaving, a last image to hold onto, a justification for her to stay sitting, stay at the bar.

She stood up.

*****  
“Logan?”

He froze when he heard her voice behind him, stopped in mid-step and just stood there. The street was empty, the silence only interrupted by the quiet click as the traffic light as it turned from green to yellow to red and the buzz a street lamp as it fluttered on and off.

“I can’t.” Logan said quietly. He meant it.

“Please.”

This was a different ‘please’, tinged with an air of desperation, a last chance that hung between them.

“You have to.” Veronica said softly and he could tell she was closer. Still, he couldn’t turn around, couldn’t face her because he knew it would all be over if he did.

“I loved you.” Logan whispered, afraid to use the present tense. Past tense felt safer, further away from reality.

“Turn around, Logan”

Leave it in the past, stuff it away, move on with your life, ignore the aching, pretend the dreams don’t happen, smile like everything’s okay.

“I can’t.”

“Please.” She asked again, her voice trembling a little.

“I can’t save you.”

He’d tried that with Lilly, tried to save her from her life and from herself. He’d failed. In the end he’d brought her to the place where she would be bludgeoned, left for dead. If he’d never loved her would she still be alive? It was a question he asked himself every single day. Logan had decided to never save anyone else.

“You can give me something to live for.”

Her words stung.

Logan turned around.

*****

She knew she’d leave sometime before the sun started to kiss the shiny steel and glass buildings of the city with its early morning light. She knew she would watch him sleep, memorize the way he looked, savor the peace on his face because she knew she was about to destroy it.

They fucked.

Grabbing, clawing, skin slippery with sweat, she dug her fingernails into his back as she felt the world start to slowly shatter around her.

He whispered his secrets to her, told her how much he’d missed her then wiped away the tears. She told him she was happy. It wasn’t a lie.

She would walk away, slip from between the Egyptian cotton sheets of the overstuffed motel bed, search the dark room for where he clothes had landed, pull them on quickly. She would do all this silently, choking back the sobs, tears running down her cheeks.

She traced every part of his body with her fingers, tasted the salt of his skin with her tongue, found places that made him cry out her name in guttural, low tones that made her smile.

Walk away. That’s what Veronica Mars had learned to do. Because they were epic and epic never meant happy. Walk away because if anyone didn’t deserve to be happy in the arms of the man she loved it was her.

So they fucked and she savored every single moment. Because she knew it would be her last. Because she knew it would their first. Because she knew he would never let her go.

“Find me.” She hissed in his ear as his jaw went slack with desire. “Find me.” She whispered as she stood over the bed watching him sleep one last time.

_Find me._

She walked away.


End file.
